This is a concept I don’t know if anyone else has thought of, but has anyone come up with blueprints for 3D-printed fire alarm equipment, from pulls to horns, to smoke detector housings?
After all, it would be a really, really cheap way to make proof-of-concept devices, or even for the person that likes to make homemade alarms, considering a $30 roll of filament can last you a long time.
1 Like
You say that like Simplex, EST, Honeywell, Wheelock, and the like don’t probably already do it. I’d be quite shocked if they didn’t do 3D printed mockups.
I printed off a smoke detector housing in my CADD class last year in an attempt to design a detector with an integrated PIR occupancy sensor (don’t quite want to give out the purpose just yet, still working on it 
). The original design was a failure and the print got put through the Filamaker unit.
I’ve wanted to print off a pull station just to mess with, but I’ve never designed a 3D-printed thing before. Is the software easy to learn?
The hardest part is getting access to the software in the first place. Usually will run you $400+ dollars for the initial license if you want something that will actually work as you expect it to. I recommend downloading Sketchup (formerly Google Sketchup) for free if you are interested in learning about it. It gives you a really good feel for how the more advanced programs work, but doesn’t offer as many features and I do not believe it is possible to print from the .skp files it creates.
RhinoCAD is probably the best 3D printing software you could get for just messing around with it, and it offers plenty of learning materials to get you started. The interface is easy to manage, and is strikingly similar to Sketchup if you used that as a foundation. You would still have to export it into the 3D printing software (MakerBot, for example) but generally you cannot design directly in those programs anyways.
Luckily, since I’m in an engineering graphics class, we’re going to be working with SolidWorks. Would that also work?
I’m planning on getting an Ender 3 printer and I will try to design a 270-spo or a simplex t-bar to print as they are quite simple devices.
I’ve never heard of SolidWorks, but I know Prusa’s software will work. Also, the 3d model file will need to be “sliced” by slicing software before being printed.
I 3D printed a wheelock 7002t